With The Shack evaporating into flames behind us, we took off down a crude path that cut into the dark woods. We fought against the stray branches, leaves, bushes and mud puddles which crossed our path with my eyes constantly sweeping my horizon, expecting to see the horrid image of Daniel running at us, but his vision would not come.
We eventually stopped when I heard the blue roar of the river ahead of us through the trees and Jeremy ran up to falling apart cabin that looked a lot like the one we had just fled. He was inside for just moments before he emerged with a hard plastic raft.
“I found this when I was going to leave your ass back in The Shack. Grab it, let’s go.”
Jeremy and I lugged the raft down to the banks of the river.
“Let’s just take this thing down the river. I don’t give a fuck if we end up in China. As long as it aint here,” Jeremy said.
We pushed the raft into the shallow waters of the river and jumped on.
I hunkered down once we set sail in the moonlight and tried to get my breath back. It would take a while, but eventually my heart would stop racing, my lungs would stop burning and my brain would calm and when that happened, I slowly drifted off into a cold sleep.
